My musings on how a middle class American sees what's gone wrong in America.

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Saturday, January 30, 2010

School Bus Accidents...Ignored?

It seems most school bus accidents go largely ignored by the press here in California, unless a student is severely injured. Some may think there are few school bus accidents, but if you simply view the CHP logs, there are many, and the press is simply either ignoring them, or for some reason, doesn't want to "let the cat out of the bag" because the real numbers of buses in accidents would probably alarm parents.

Every day there are numerous minor bus accidents in San Diego County alone, yet the only ones you ever see reported are those where the student is transported by ambulance, due to injuries. And, you might not actually see those if the news doesn't care to report on it.

Parents need to demand an accounting for the safety of their children on school transportation, be it privately operated under contract, or operated by the school districts themselves. There are many highly qualified, safe operators out there. But I can tell you from first hand experience, there are operators who regularly exceed the speed limits daily, and calls to their district and supervisors, while met with surprise and promises to take action, do nothing to slow them down.

In numerous cases, while operating FCC licensed moving radar, school buses have been clocked at 15 to 20 miles over the 55 mile per hour mandated speed limit with students on board. Some buses pass all too frequently, fail to signal and allow students to stand while the bus is in motion. All of which lends to the severity of injury in event of accident.

Children are our most precious resource and the most precious cargo carried on the buses of any transportation system in the world. For them to be anything less than 100% safe is tragedy waiting to happen.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Really? I can not believe that numerous school bus accidents happen on a yearly bases must less a daily as you have stated be apart of CHP I can tell you for all of California the accidents of school buses are looked at very closely. This sounds more like either, you were let go by a school bus company, your child was kicked off the bus for misconduct or something like that, and you sound to angry just to be an observer.

Obviously, you don't have a clue where to look for school bus accidents, so I'll helep you out. Go to http://cad.chp.ca.gov/ and check out the traffic indinet pages under "media information" for a start. They list most of the incidents investigated daily.

I spent most of my life an as accident investigator, and been to many accidents. Some were school bus fatalities and those broke my heart! Sure, they are looked at closely, as are all accidents. Do you think that means they don't happen? Only an imbecile would postulate that from my posting.

I never drove a school bus, my kids never took a school bus in California, I have radar clocked school buses at 15 to 20 miles over the speed limit, and I have seen buses being operated in unsafe conditions. Is that the majority? No. Is it a minority? I can't say that either, but any accident with a school bus with our most presious cargo is too many accidents. Period!